REGION: “Bookmarked” — the ‘seed’ of who they are

John Joanino and his sister sat in âour makeshift living room, starving, while our parents searched for that magical âRoyal Flushâ or the lucky â777â.â Magic and luck rarely dropped by.

âWe would get evicted again and move to another apartmentâ¦ all of our belongings could be packed into a single car.â

The writer, a recent grad of Riversideâs North High, wanted to believe when his parents said âeverything would be all rightâ¦soon we wouldnât have to worry about where weâd spend the night.â But he grew weary of promises. He recalled a passage from William Faulknerâs, âAs I Lay Dyingâ: I learned that words are no good; that words donât ever fit even what they are trying to say.

It may seem strange that âWords Are No Goodâ appears in âBookmarked,â a collection of 50 essays written by North students and recent alums. Stranger still that such a book would ever get written, published (Free Spirit Publishing) and gussied up for a Riverside launch later this month.

But here is a true oddity: Ann Camacho, a North High English teacher whose students read 10 novels a year and frequently write up to 45 minutes a stretch. And always exceed the All Mighty California Standards.

But it was a book of 50-year-old essays that inspired her to compile what a Columbia U. prof calls âan eloquent and moving tribute to the liberating power of the written word.â As she read âThis I Believe,â essays inspired by a radio program launched by Edward R. Murrow, Camacho âsat straight up in bedâ and thought, âMy kids can totally do this!â

In 2010, she emailed her juniors and students sheâd taught over a 5-year span (some in college, UCs to Ivys): Take a quotation from a book youâve read and write a personal essay that gets to the âseedâ of who you are. She received 70 essays:

One student was yanked from her drug-dealing mom and placed in foster care. âI told myself I needed to set a good example for my sisterâ¦ I needed to keep going with my life.â She thought of Christopher Robin telling Winnie the Pooh, You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think. Sheâs at UCR.

Anthony Accuar quotes Robert Frost â" miles to go before I sleep â" to describe his resolve to get the most out of his life to honor his brother who died at 16, before Anthony was born.

Camacho, 46, edited the book, but says the enterprise is not about her. (Proceeds from âBookmarkedâ will flow into a scholarship for a North student.)

Camacho: âThere are a lot of teachers who have passion and creativityâ and who can teach âwithout staying attached to the (California standards) pacing guide.â The results are self-evident.

âBookmarkedâ essays hinge on quotations that, Camacho says, âkeep (writersâ) thoughts from floating away.â What she didnât say is the essays could only have been written by students whoâd learned to write and read and learned to size up what theyâd read and written: students whoâd been put through the grinder by a passionate, creative, exacting teacher like Ann Camacho.

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